How Sprint keeps pornography away from underage cell phone users
In a recent Etopia Media Entertainment News Network article entitled "Sprint spokesperson discusses PCS Vision's "walled garden" and "open garden" approach to protecting underage cell phone users from pornography," a spokesperson for Sprint's PCS Vision wireless broadband Internet service explained how underage users of that system were protected from exposure to online pornography through a division of that service into a "walled garden" and an "open garden."
In the Sprint PCS Vision system, according to the Sprint spokesperson, visitors to the "walled garden" cannot access content stronger than what the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allows on broadcast television, while those with access to the "open garden" of the unshielded Internet can access whatever the Internet has to offer.
The Sprint spokesperson indicated that parents wanting their children to be protected from the "open garden" content of the wide-open Internet could do so either by precluding them from owning or using cellular handsets capable of receiving Sprint PCS Vision services, or by calling Sprint customer services and asking that Sprint PCS Vision 3G services be excluded from the underage cell phone user's account.
How T-Mobile keeps pornography away from underage cell phone users
Entertainment Technology World spoke this afternoon with Bryan Zidar, spokesperson for
T-Mobile, to find out how the fourth largest of the five leading cellular carriers deals with this issue.
Mr. Zidar explained that T-Mobile, a service of
T-Mobile USA, which is itself owned by
Deutsche Telekom AG, (NYSE:DT) based in Bonn, Germany, also maintains a "walled garden" for its Internet access services, but does not,
"at this time," offer an "open garden" option for access to the general Internet and all the content available there.
Mr. Zidar said that the content available to its
t-zones service subscribers on what it calls the "Mobile Web" are provided either by content-producing companies directly or by content aggregators, both classes of content providers being limited to those "having a relationship with T-Mobile," and that no content more explicit than what is allowed under the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)'s "PG-13" rating is available to anyone, including underage users, through the t-zones service.
What exactly does "PG-13" mean?
The
MPAA, in a section of its web site entitled "WHAT THE RATINGS MEAN," says:
"PG-13:'Parents Strongly Cautioned. Some Material May Be Inappropriate For Children Under 13.'
"PG-13 is thus a sterner warning to parents to determine for themselves the attendance in particular of their younger children as they might consider some material not suited for them. Parents, by the rating, are alerted to be very careful about the attendance of their under-teenage children.
"A PG-13 film is one which, in the view of the Rating Board, leaps beyond the boundaries of the PG rating in theme, violence, nudity, sensuality, language, or other contents, but does not quite fit within the restricted R category. "
What T-Mobile recommends in regard to access to inappropriate t-zone Mobile Web services content for underage cell phone users
Get in the swing with additional Etopia Media News Network articles and interviews and Google Alerts
Join the "Etopia Media Entertainment News Network™" mailing list (unless you're already on another Etopia Media mailing list)